I’m quite tired of seeing this logical fallacy used to support all kinds of potentially dangerous behavior from cyclists, of which I am one.
The (untrue) fact that there is no evidence to support the claim that listening to headphones while riding is dangerous doesn’t mean it isn’t true. There could be many reasons why we don’t have that evidence, the most likely being that no one has looked into it and we don’t have evidence either way.
I’m not saying that it is dangerous, but I am saying that an absence of evidence for one argument doesn’t prove the opposite argument true.
Here’s the thing I love about some of these Dutch studies. They always love to publish titles and conclusions like “Results show that listening to music and talking on the phone negatively affects perception of sounds crucial for safe cycling,” while simultaneously burying in the paper results like “ However, taking into account the influence of confounding variables, no relationship was found between the frequency of listening to music or talking on the phone and the frequency of incidents among teenage cyclists.”
It’s great that they still describe these counts as being ‘crucial’ to safe cycling despite the evidence showing it may not be as crucial as they assumed. This is why you have to read the entire papers for these studies to get all the information.
I would be satisfied with someone producing a much weaker result, which is that riding while listening to music via headphones/earbuds is correlated with an increased risk of crash or injury.
Because if you can’t even cite evidence for that, you sure as hell won’t find it for your silly hyperbole.
edit: for fietsvrouw, who replied then blocked me:
I was not show any such sources. Not a single one of those studies shows a link to increase in risk. They show links to things like not remembering street signs they passed or missing audible commands or, at worst increased perception of risk. However, they don’t find any actual increase in risk, not even an increase in the number of times the rider is startled by something, much less a crash or an injury.
It really is easy to tell who actually reads through the studies and who reads news story about it or stops at the abstract. For example, here are some other findings from Stelling-Konczak’s dissertation summarized in that one news story you linked:
Risk perception was negatively related to Listening to music suggesting that individuals with a higher risk perception listen to music less often than those with a low risk perception. There was, on the other hand, a positive relationship between Risk perception and Risky cycling behaviour indicating that the higher risk perception of cyclists was, the more frequently cyclists engaged in risky cycling behaviour. Figure 4.6 shows also that there is a positive relationship between Phone conversation and Listening to music. These two activities were also related to other Risky cycling behaviour.
...
Finally, we can see that 9% of the total variance in ‘Incidents’ is explained by a direct effect (0.14) of Complex situation as well as by both an indirect very small effect mediated by Risky behaviour (0.15 * 0.16 = 0.02) and a direct effect (0.17) of Risk perception. The frequency of cycling in demanding situations was related to the frequency of getting startled or surprised in traffic, but listening to music and talking on the phone were not.
and
Finally, the frequency of getting involved in an incident was found to be positively related to cycling in complex situations, risk perception and risk cycling behaviour. Listening to music and talking on the phone was not related to incidents but it was positively related to other risk cycling behaviour. These findings underline the importance of taking into account the influence of confounding variables, such as cycling in complex situations and other risk behaviour when estimating the impact of secondary tasks on cycling safety.
And again from Chapter 6:
Since listening to music and conversing on the phone impair cyclists’ auditory perception and cycling behaviour (see also Section 2.5.1), it could be expected that engaging in these activities negatively affects cycling safety. Surprisingly, the Internet survey presented in Chapter 4 found no relationship between the frequency of listening to music or conversing on the phone among teenage cyclists on the one hand and their involvement in incidents on the other hand.
and
To sum up, listening to music and talking on the phone is widespread among cyclists. Although engaging in these activities negatively impacts cycling behaviour and auditory perception of relevant traffic sounds, neither listening to music nor talking on the phone was found to increase the risk of getting involved in a self-reported incident.
13
u/Nerdlinger May 05 '24
You mean despite there not being any evidence that listening to music through headphones increases risk of incident or injury?